Biography of Halle Berry

Halle Maria Berry was born on the 14th of August, 1968 (though some insist it was 1966), in Cleveland, Ohio. Halle Berry was named after the town's Halle Building, which originally housed the Halle Brothers department store but is now an office block (it's also used in the Drew Carey Show). Her father, Jerome Berry, an African American and a hospital attendant by trade, left when Halle Berry was just four, so she and her elder sister Heidi Berry were raised by their Caucasian, Liverpool-born mother, Judith, herself a nurse in a psychiatric ward. Jerome would return after four years but the violence he directed towards Judith and Heidi meant that he did not stay for long. Throughout her adult life, Halle Would have no contact with him at all, still being estranged when Jerome died in 2003.

Halle Berry's first few years were spent in a black neighbourhood of Cleveland. Here her fair complexion made her stand out, but not as much as she did when her mother moved them out of the inner-city to a mainly white suburb. Now, a little older and in this conservative milieu, her "difference" was not so readily tolerated. "I'm black," Halle Berry said later. "I realised very early in my life that I wasn't going to be this mulatto stuck in the middle, not knowing if I'm black or white".

To overcome these racial difficulties, Halle Berry threw herself into school activities at Bedford High and tried to make friends. She did well. Halle Berry was in the Honour Society, a cheerleader, class president, and an editor on the school newspaper. And, naturally, she was Prom Queen. At least, Halle Berry was joint Prom Queen. Having won outright, she was accused of voting irregularities and (guess what?) forced to share her title with a WASP.

Elsewhere, Halle Berry was a clear winner. Her looks drew her towards beauty contests and, by 1983, Halle Berry was Miss Teen Ohio. From here Halle Berry became Miss Teen All-American, and Miss Ohio, then was runner-up in the Miss USA contest, a placing that saw her entered into the Miss World competition - Halle Berry was the first African-American to do so. Halle Berry didn't win, but she did make enough money from modelling to return to Cleveland and enrol at the Cuyahoga Community College where she studied broadcast journalism.

She didn't complete the course. Instead, having decided to act, Halle Berry financed herself by more modelling and studied acting in Chicago, before moving on to Manhattan in search of work. And it was quick coming. Before long she was playing Emily Franklin, one of four young girls hoping to make it as models in the comedy series Living Dolls, a spin-off from Who's The Boss. It was coincidental and telling that Emily was the one who wanted to use modelling to finance her medical studies.

Sadly, the show lasted only three months, but Halle Berry had come to the attention of radical black director Spike Lee, then casting for his latest movie, Jungle Fever. Halle Berry was hired to play a crack addict (no doubt to illustrate how even the beautiful can be destroyed by drugs). Halle Berry accompanied the police on visits to real-life crack houses and refused to wash for days before shooting began, to get that authentic feel. She's long been known for living her roles, both on and off camera, and takes an interest in the whole filming process. Spike Lee allowed Halle Berry to view the dailies and witness the editing. And she was impressive, so impressive that - despite the pong - she had a brief fling with the film's star, Wesley Snipes who, in the movie, played a married man who takes on several taboos by having an affair with white-girl Annabella Sciorra. Also featuring was Samuel L. Jackson, who'd be a regular co-star of Halle Berry

Halle Berry was also looking for TV work where she could find it and, in 1991, scored a part as Debbie Porter in the Dallas spin-off Knot's Landing, which had featured such luminaries as Alec Baldwin, Kirsty Swanson and even Ava Gardner. But film roles took precedence and next, again alongside Jackson, she played the love interest in the buddy-comedy Strictly Business. Here Halle Berry was a cool club promoter who spurns the advances of a dull black stockbroker. He then turns to a dude in the mail-room to help him learn to be more impressive. A kind of My Fair Nigga - know what I'm sayin'? Halle Berry's part did not come without a struggle. Halle Berry was discarded by the original director for not being black enough, then was re-instated when the director himself was replaced.

Next came a hot role in a great movie. In The Last Boy Scout, Halle Berry played the exotic girlfriend of Damon Wayans, a footballer who, aided by Bruce Willis, is drawn into a dangerous struggle with corporate gangsters. For research this time, Halle Berry danced for real in a Hollywood strip club, and put in an excellent, if short, performance.

Her admirable work so far - not bad for a mere model, eh? - saw her cast in Eddie Murphy's next vehicle, Boomerang. Here Eddie Murphy played an arrogant, womanising ad exec who's traumatised when he, in turn, is treated like a piece of meat by his new boss, Robin Givens. Wholly undermined, he's helped out by "nice girl" Halle Berry. Not only did Halle Berry impress audiences but also co-star Chris Rock, who later had her appear in his rap spoof CB4.

Things were really looking up, career-wise, and in her love-life, too. Halle has had an extraordinarily bad time in relationships. Halle Berry's lost some of the hearing in one ear due to physical abuse, and another fellow she dumped became something of a stalker, plaguing her for years afterwards and even sending her dead snakes in the post. In January 1993, this looked to be changing when she married Atlanta Braves right fielder David Justice (now of the Yankees), to whom she'd proposed after just six months. They became a pin-up couple, with magazines cooing over their relationship. Sadly, it did not last. They divorced amidst vicious acrimony in 1996. Halle Berry threw herself into work, on screen and for charities. Halle Berry toiled for the National Breast Cancer Coalition and visited US troops in Sarajevo, later being given an award by the Harvard Foundation for Intercultural and Race Relations.

Determined not to be viewed as mere eye candy, Halle Berry now took the lead in the TV miniseries Queen by Roots-writer Alex Haley. Here she played the title role in the true story of Haley's own grandmother, as she struggled on the tobacco plantations in the days immediately prior to the end of slavery. Fathered by a white slave master, Queen struggles to understand her own identity and to find love in a harsh world. Co-starring Ann-Margret, Martin Sheen and Danny Glover, the show was an epic and a great success.

After this came Father Hood, where Patrick Swayze played a crook on the run with his two kids who've broken out of a foster-shelter where they've been abused. Halle Berry played a journalist trying to track them down and thus uncover the corruption in the foster system. The movie was disappointing, but it showed once again how Halle Berry was keen to deal with serious subject matter. And this was the case too with The Program, about the awful pressures placed on college football-players. The film became notorious for one scene where a boy, unable to take any more, calmly lies down before onrushing traffic. There were several copy-cat fatalities, so Disney pulled the movie and removed the offending scene.

Having taken a far lighter role as sexy secretary Sharon Stone in The Flintstones, Halle Berry then moved on to even heavier material than The Program. In Losing Isaiah, Halle Berry was once again a crack addict, this time dumping her own baby in a dustbin. A few years later, now cleaned up, she finds that her child is alive and has been fostered by social worker Jessica Lange. A court battle ensues, with Halle Berry aided by lawyer Samuel Jackson.

For a couple of years, Halle Berry career went downhill - probably due to the savage break-up of her marriage and the ensuing press furore. Halle Berry was the Queen of Sheba to Jimmy Smits' Solomon in a TV remake of the Yul Brynner/Gina Lollobrigida classic. Then there was an unimportant (read Female) part in the Kurt Russell/Steven Seagal roustabout Executive Decision, about terrorists seizing an aircraft. Next there was The Rich Man's Wife, a poor noir thriller where Halle Berryshe played an unhappy spouse who tells stranger Clive Owen she wishes her husband were dead. When he soon is, she begins to fear that she's set something terrible in motion. Worse still was BAPs where Halle Berry played one of two desperately tacky Southern waitresses who, hoping to launch their own restaurant-come-hairdressers, seek their fortune in LA where Berry winds up trying to kid millionaire Martin Landau that she's his former lover's grand-daughter. Meanwhile, Landau's butler teaches her and her friend how to be ladies. Doesn't sound very promising, does it? No.

Now, with the Justice affair behind her, things began to change. First came miniseries The Wedding , another racially motivated movie, this time asking whether Halle Berry should marry a white jazz musician or do the proper thing and wed a black man. Then came the comeback, and in the strangest possible way. In Bulworth, Warren Beatty played a suicidal senator who organises a hit on himself and decides to spend his last hours telling the truth to the people. Down in South Central, he meets street-smart Halle Berry who thinks his honesty is another political con-job, but gradually comes to fall for his bizarre integrity, as does the rest of the nation. It's an appalling film on so many levels. That Berry should fall for the wrinkled Beatty was absurd, but that wasn't a patch on Beatty's skin-crawlingly embarrassing attempts at rapping. Yet somehow Halle Berry shone - and all the more so because she was surrounded by such awestriking ineptitude.

Now back in the minds of Hollywood's powerbrokers, Halle Berry cemented her position with two smaller but infinitely more worthy projects. First came Why Do Fools Fall In Love where Halle Berry played one of three women claiming to be the widow of singer Frankie Lymon and battling for his estate. Then, in 1999, there was Introducing Dorothy Dandridge, executively produced by Halle Berry herself. Dandridge was the first black actress to be nominated for the Best Actress Oscar - for Carmen Jones. The film followed her from her early days on the club circuit, through her screen career, her affair with Otto Preminger, her troubles with racists (in one hotel they emptied the pool and scrubbed it after she put her foot in it), and on to her sad death from an overdose. Co-incidentally, Dandridge was born in the same Cleveland hospital as Halle Berry.

Halle Berry was terrific in the role, winning both an Emmy and a Golden Globe. Halle Berry was back - her disappointment at turning down the Sandra Bullock role in Speed now a distant memory. And, at last, Halle Berry had a stable relationship, in 1999 having got engaged to Eric Benet. Benet was a successful musician, signed to WEA - his A Day In The Life album would go Gold. He had been married too, but his wife had died in a car crash, leaving him to care for daughter India (born in 1992). He needed Halle Berry as much as she needed him (maybe more after he appeared in Mariah Carey's disastrous Glitter), and they were married in January 2001. However, the relationship would quickly turn sour. Halle Berry would rail at newspapers for making up stories about Benet's affairs, but eventually he admitted that it was all true. Trying to keep the marriage together, Halle Berry helped him combat his sex addiction, took him to counselling, but it was all to no avail. They'd separate in October 2003 and she'd file for divorce, a situation complicated when Benet, whose career had gone downhill, tried to have their pre-nuptial agreement annulled. By this time Halle Berry was, after all, one of the highest paid stars in Hollywood.

The new millennium brought big movies. First Halle Berry made a tremendous Storm, a mutant super-heroine capable of controlling the weather, in the massive hit X-Men. Then came Swordfish, with John Travolta and her X-Men co-star Hugh Jackman. This concerned computer hackers going after billions of dollars in unused government funds, Halle Berry's Ginger being used by boyfriend/employer Halle Berry to seduce/recruit ex-con Jackman, and was very stylish, though audience polls suggested that everyone's favourite moment was when Halle Berry went topless. Halle Berry shrugged that off, admitting she took the role in order to finance other more interesting work. But Halle Berry vociferously denied receiving an extra $500,000 for removing her clothes, as she would deny the $1 million fee it was claimed she accepted for the sex scene in Monster's Ball.

But it wasn't all plain sailing. In February 2000, Halle Berry ran a red light in her rented Chevrolet Blazer and, on Sunset Boulevard, hit the vehicle of one Hetha Raythatha whose wrist was broken in the collision. Halle Berry took off for hospital where she received 20 stitches in her head, only reporting the accident later. Despite claiming Halle Berry was disorientated by the injury to her head, she was charged with leaving the scene of an accident and got three years probation, a $13,500 fine and 200 hours community service. PLUS she'll have to pay whatever compensation is demanded after the inevitable civil action.

Whatever, Halle Berry was now a huge star. Next came Monster's Ball where she played the widow of executed criminal Puff Daddy. A struggling waitress with a kid to support, she's lonely and desperate and seeks solace in the arms of Billy Bob Thornton who, as it turns out, is one of the wardens who put her husband to death - the situation being complicated further by the fact that Thornton's son, played by Heath Ledger, commits suicide. The film was a big hit, but nearly wasn't made at all. With finances tight, all the actors worked for union scale. And it was controversial before it was ever released, the director having to cut a full minute from the scene where Halle Berry and Thornton first make love. The renowned critic David Thomson wrote that Halle Berry was so good in the scene that she "absolved" the whole movie, saying she was a "wrecked creature demanding confrontation, full frontal embrace. And it is in her plunging down to some erotic base line that the film does really locate a bond between blacks and whites that gives cause for hope". The Academy agreed with his estimation, nominating her for an Oscar. After appearing in so many cinematic critiques of race relations in America, Halle Berry was delighted to be nominated alongside Denzel Washington and Will Smith. When she won, her delight overflowed, as she sobbed her thanks out to the millions and, hyperventilating wildly, told all black women how proud she was to be the vessel who'd opened the door for all of them. Everyone knew what she meant. Along with Washington's win and a Special Oscar for Sidney Poitier, the ceremony was an absolute triumph for the black acting community.

Though Halle Berry continued to suffer from diabetes, a condition she discovered when she collapsed on-set while filming Living Dolls, Halle Berry's career remained on the up. Halle Berry appeared in ads for Revlon, M&Ms and Pepsi Twist. And Halle Berry won the part of Jinx in the 20th James Bond instalment, Die Another Day. As the only Oscar winner to play a Bond girl (she won during filming, Kim Basinger won 14 years after Never Say Never Again) it was fitting that Halle Berry should bring something new to the franchise, Jinx being a dab-hand with a double-entendre but also a very competent agent, planting bombs and diving from great heights. Sure, she was glamorous, echoing Ursula Andress in Dr No when she rose from the sea in a very skimpy bikini, complete with diving knife, but with Jinx and Bond side-by-side it was almost a buddy movie.

Next, Halle Berry played Storm again, in X-Men 2 - she turned down Ben Affleck's Gigli to do so, being replaced by Jennifer Lopez. Here, renegade mutant Nightcrawler has attacked the White House in order to turn the authorities against the mutants and general Brian Cox is after them all, Storm at one point creating tornados to save her friends in an aerial pursuit. It was another massive success, smashing the $200 million barrier. And there'd be another hit immediately with Gothika, with Halle Berry headlining and dominating the poster. Here Halle Berry was Miranda Grey, a prison psychiatrist who suffers a car crash and wakes up in the prison, accused of murdering her husband and unable to remember a thing. Trapped in this Dickensian establishment, where Robert Downey Jr was a fellow pschiatrist and Penelope Cruz a former patient and now an inmate, she must struggle for her freedom and her sanity. Such was her current pulling power that only The Cat In The Hat kept Gothika from the number one spot. The success made up for the broken arm she received in an on-screen struggle with Downey, an injury that halted production for 8 weeks.

Aside from the hits, Halle Berry'd also enjoy massive exposure at the 2003 Oscars ceremony when presenting the Best Actor award to Adrien Brody for The Pianist. Over-joyed at his good fortune, Brody seized her and kissed her with quite unseemly passion, the clinch being the highlight of a show viewed by hundreds of millions.

Now came Catwoman, the beginning of a hoped-for franchise based on the success of Michelle Pfeiffer in Batman Returns, Pfeiffer herself having turned the part down because the suit was too uncomfortable. Ashley Judd would also pass it up, preferring to work on Broadway in the infinitely more serious Cat On A Hot Tin Roof. Using the rather spurious logic that the character has nine completely separate lives, the makers decided to forget all that Selena Kyle stuff and consider instead the story of Patience Phillips, a shy and sensitive graphic designer working for the ruthless Hedare Beauty Cosmetics company, run by Sharon Stone (remember Halle Berry's character in The Flintstones?). The company are about to launch a revolutionary new anti-aging product, Phillips stumbles onto the dark secret behind it then becomes Catwoman after an encounter with an Egyptian Mau. Pursuing her would be besotted detective Benjamin Bratt as she sought revenge against criminals in general and Stone in particular. It was another tough shoot, with failed stunts sending Halle Berry to hospital yet again, and it did not test well, re-shoots being required just a month before release.

Halle Berry moved on to Their Eyes Were Watching God, a TV movie produced by Oprah Winfrey and based on the novel by Zora Neale Hurston. This saw Halle Berry as the free-spirited Janie Crawford, a young woman going through several marriages from the 1920s and challenging the conservative views of those around her. She'd also lend her voice to the animated Robots, playing a similar role to her Ginger in Swordfish. This time she'd be a cyber-seducer, sent by evil Mel Brooks to stop Ewan McGregor from changing the world for the better.

Naturally, there would be X-Men 3 and, with Halle Berry now such a big star, Storm would be given a far more vital role. Halle Berry was constantly newsworthy, one story involving her successful attempt to prevent ex-Navy SEAL Greg Broussard from stalking her (he believed they were engaged - the nutjob).

Filmography of Halle Berry

Complete movie list starring Halle Berry

	Guide, The (2004) (in production) .... Jane Whitefield
	Set-Up, The (2004) (in production)
	Foxy Brown (2005) (announced) .... Foxy Brown
	Nappily Ever After (2004) (announced) .... Venus Johnson
	Their Eyes Were Watching God (2005) (TV) (filming) .... Janie
	Robots (2005) (filming) (voice) .... Cappy
	Catwoman (2004) starring Halle Berry as Patience Phillips/Catwoman Patience Philips is a woman who can't seem to stop apologizing for her own existence. She works as a graphic designer for Hedare Beauty, a mammoth cosmetics company on the verge of releasing a revolutionary anti-aging product
	Gothika (2003) .... Miranda Grey
	X2 (2003) .... starring Halle Berry as Storm/Ororo Munroe ... aka X-Men 2 (2003) (Singapore: English title) (USA: working title) ... aka X-2 (2003) (USA: poster title) ... aka X-Men 2: X-Men United (2003) (USA: promotional title) ... aka X2: X-Men United (2003) (USA: promotional title) - Mutants continue their struggle against a society that fears and distrusts them. Their cause becomes even more desperate following an incredible attack by an as yet undetermined assailant possessing extraordinary abilities.
	Die Another Day (2002) starring Halle Berry as Jinx Johnson ... aka D.A.D. (2002) (USA: promotional abbreviation) - James Bond travels to Iceland where he experiences at first hand the power of an amazing new weapon before a dramatic confrontation with his main adversary back in Korea where it all started...
	Monster's Ball (2001) .... starring Halle Berry as Leticia Musgrove ... aka Bal du monstre, Le (2002) (Canada: French title) - Hank and Leticia's interracial affair leads to confusion and new ideas for the two unlikely lovers
	Swordfish (2001) .... Ginger
	X-Men (2000) starring Halle Berry .... Storm/Ororo Munroe ... aka X-Men 1.5 (2003) (USA: DVD title) In the near future, where children are being born with a special X-Factor in their genes, giving them special powers, and making them "mutants", the seeds of a new Holocaust are being sewn by Senator Robert Kelly. The situation brings fellow mutants and former friends Erik Lehnsherr, a.k.a. Magneto, and Professor Charles Xavier into opposition.
	Introducing Dorothy Dandridge (1999) (TV) .... Dorothy Dandridge
	Why Do Fools Fall In Love (1998) .... Zola Taylor
	Bulworth (1998) .... Nina
	Wedding, The (1998) (TV) .... Shelby Coles ... aka Oprah Winfrey Presents: The Wedding (1998) (TV)
	B*A*P*S (1997) .... Nisi ... aka B.A.P.S. (1997)
	Rich Man's Wife, The (1996) .... Josie Potenza
	Race the Sun (1996) .... Miss Sandra Beecher
	Executive Decision (1996) .... Jean (flight attendant) ... aka Critical Decision (1996)
	Losing Isaiah (1995) .... Khaila Richards
	Solomon & Sheba (1995) (TV) .... Nikhaule/Queen Sheba
	Flintstones, The (1994) .... Sharon Stone
	Program, The (1993) .... Autumn Haley
	Father Hood (1993) .... Kathleen Mercer ... aka Desperado (1993) ... aka Honor Among Thieves (1993) ... aka Mike Hardy (1993)
	"Queen" (1993) (mini) TV Series .... Queen ... aka "Alex Haley's Queen" (1993) (mini)
	Boomerang (1992) .... Angela Lewis
	"Knots Landing" (1979) TV Series .... Debbie Porter (1991)
	Last Boy Scout, The (1991) .... Cory
	Strictly Business (1991) .... Natalie
	Jungle Fever (1991) .... Vivian
	"Living Dolls" (1989) TV Series .... Emily Franklin (1989

Photo gallery of Halle Berry

Halle Berry News and Gossip

According to The Sunday Express, the star Halle Berry appealed to the 'Los Angeles Sentinel' columnist Deanna Micaud that Halle Berry letter, in which Halle Berry also asked for career advice following failure of 'Catwoman' at the box office, be published with her name in the paper.

Of Halle Berry movie miss, the actress reportedly wrote, "This thing with Catwoman is really affecting me but I've put up a brave front to get past it."

Michaud, whose column is a hit among African-American women in Los Angeles, admits that in the beginning she was skeptical about the authenticity of the letter even though the writer insisted, "Yes, I'm really Halle Berry, and this is not a hoax."

"I'm satisfied that this is an authentic letter from Halle Berry. She told me something in her letter which is so very personal only she would know it," the columnist was quoted as saying.

I've been able to verify that the very sensitive, confidential information she included, which will not be published, was indeed, penned by her," she added

News, Gossip and Trivia HALLE BERRY

Oscar winner Halle Berry says she's completely happy with her looks and not afraid of getting old because black women don't age quickly.

The 38-year-old star of Cat Woman told Austrian magazine Woman she's not worried about ageing.

"I'm happy with what I see. I feel relaxed about ageing. I haven't had any operations yet," said Halle Berry.

Halle Berry added she believes black women stay younger-looking longer than white women. "Black women in my age really don't have to worry about anything," she said.

"My grandmother is over 80 and her skin is immaculate. I hope I won't have to think about getting Botox treatment until I'm 80," said Halle Berry.

Hally Berry's Party

Halle Berry opened her home in the hills above Sunset Boulevard on Sept. 27 to host a party for acting coach Ivana Chubbuck.

The intimate soiree, where the only light came from candles scattered throughout Halle Berry y's house, was a kickoff for the release of Chubbuck's book, "The Power of the Actor: The Chubbuck Technique."

But it was obvious that Halle Berry and other guests (including Kate Bosworth, Pink, Eva Mendes, Amy Smart and Garry Shandling) were there to pay homage to their acting god more than to help sales.

"She taught me that it's OK to take risks," Halle Berry said. "When I met Ivana, I was afraid to do nudity. My first movie I did with her was 'Swordfish,' and she said to me, 'You gotta do it. It's your biggest fear. Your hands are behind your back. If you can't really use your body as your instrument and forget what society thinks -- forget what you think about yourself, forget all this bulls--t that you have going around in your head trying to be loved and liked by everybody -- if you can't let go of that then you're not a real artist.' And although that movie seemed like it was gratuitous nudity -- which it was -- it was much deeper for me."

The risk-taking and an acclaimed performance in "Monster's Ball" paid off with an Oscar for Halle Berry , who thanked Chubbuck in her acceptance speech.

"She helped me become a better woman, a better person, a better actor, and my life is fully enriched because she's in it. She believes in me and I believe in her, which is why tonight, like the best thing I could do is to show her."